Stimulating… extraordinary… performance…

Based in Manchester, hÅb is a producer, developer, and strategic advocate of contemporary performance, live art, and sited work in the North of England. greenroom’s key partner for over a decade, hÅb aims to maintain its legacy — working in collaboration with a range of venues + other partners to produce showing opportunities, platforms, and artist development projects including Divergency, Emergency, Haphazard, Hazard + Works Ahead.

Essentially industry-facing, hÅb works with artists, colleagues, venues + others to create the best possible opportunities for new work to flourish. A member of Live Art UK — a national network supporting and developing the UK’s Live Art infrastructure for the benefit of artists, presenters, and audiences — hÅb is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Since Jan 2012, hÅb gone ‘public’ in the guise of Word of Warning — a peripatetic programme of, and regular bulletin for, contemporary live work in Manchester + beyond. NB this part of our site aims to offer information to artists wanting to know more about hÅb’s work and how to get involved; for more information about our public programme please see Word of Warning.

From Emergency, an annual micro-festival for new live work which presents about 30 short pieces in a day each autumn (next in Sep 2019, its twentieth year) and its former Merseyside sibling, ‘Poolside Emergency; through Works Ahead, a series of small commissions for new work (next in May 2020, its ninth year) — we aim to provide a joined-up series of opportunities for emerging new work and artists in contemporary performance + live art.

hÅb works as a curator of sited performance + intervention presenting Hazard, a biennial micro-festival of intervention that takes performance out of the black box environment and into Manchester city centre (last in Aug 2018, its seventh year), as well as Haphazard, our frequent foray into all ages live art with Z-arts (last in Apr 2019, its fifth year). We also co-produce Turn with Contact, a regular micro-festival for new northern dance + dance-makers (last in Apr 2017, its ninth year).

In any given year, hÅb might work with 150 artists, present two platforms, a sited festival, and show over 60 pieces of work as Word of Warning.